Truth
by soavezefiretto
Summary: Post "all things" MSR, Mulder writes a journal. Chapter five, post-"Requiem". NOW COMPLETE Please r&r. Angst, of course. (Yes, and I know "Mulder doesn't write journals")
1. Prayer

Disclaimer: Don't own them, using them without permission. Hoping, in good faith, that I'm not doing any harm. Just entertaining myself. It's the summer vacation, you know?  
  
Summary: Post-"all things"- Mulder's Journal-thingy.  
  
Comment: Been done a thousand times over, I know. No excuses there. As usual, I try to keep them as much in character as I can, and making it as romantic and angsty as I can, whitout being too sappy. Also, the usual warning: english is not my native language.  
  
Review: It would be very helpful. As I said, I try to make it romantic and angsty, but not overly mushy, so what do *you* think? Does it work at all? If not, what do you think I could improve? Or do you think it's so bad that I should stop altogether?  
  
Prayer  
  
by  
  
Miranda  
  
She's gone. I knew she would be. I knew it even in my sleep.  
  
This book has been full of her, lately. I've been leafing through it backwards, and then reading it straight from the beginning. I've never done that. For some reason, this seems like the right moment. The early morning sun is shining through the window, it's not yet six o'clock. Everything is still, the house is empty. The house is empty.  
  
At first, and for a long time, the entries are short and matter of fact. The absurd attempt to account for my obsessiones in a detached and objective way. As if one could ever be detached and objective about obsessions. Only back then I couldn't admit that it *was* an obsession. I thought of it as a mission, the mission of my lifetime, maybe even my destiny... Who knows, maybe I still believe that. What do I know. What do I know of anything.  
  
Maybe I thought that by writing it all down, from the beginning, as if it was a story, that it would come to an end, somehow, sometime, because all stories must come to an end eventually. The entries are mostly about Samantha, if and how often I had thought about her during the day, if any events had reminded me of her, if I had remembered a new detail, like did she hold her braids together with rubber bands or cloth, or the time she fell off a tree she decided to climb though I told her not to, because it was too tall. She picked herself up, and I knew it must hurt a lot, but she didn't cry, she just looked at me and said "don't be scared, Fox..."  
  
The first note about Scully reads: "They finally assigned me a 'partner'. Woman by the name of Scully. Redhead, ugly checkerd suit, quite amazing eyes. Someone to send in the negative reports that will get me off the X-Files." After that, there are no "personal" comments on her for a while. But I begin to write about the cases I'm working at, which I never did before. Well, at first only cases involving (or which I believed involved) what I still rather pathetically call "the alien conspiracy". But soon there are notes on almost every case, and, scattered throughout, remarks about how I feel, these feelings more often than not including Scully or being directly related to her. I can't believe I didn't notice at the time, it's so obvious. Like this one: "Motel dinner with Scully. We talked about the TV shows we liked when we were kids. Not one coincidence. And yet - a sense of belonging, almost of fulfilment, even. Although, again, nothing has been proven, we didn't even get to make an arrest. How is it that so many X-Files solve themselves when the suspects conveniently disposing of themselves?"  
  
Belonging, fulfilment... how could I write down those things, have them right before my eyes, and not stop and start, not catch my breath? Then there are things like this, dated threee years ago: "Sunday. I don't quite know what to do with myself. What *do* people do on sundays? What do *I* do on sudays?" I remember that sunday, and I remember what I was thinking. Not about my sunday, but hers. Was she visiting one of her girlfriends, was she spending it with her mother, her family, people she had neglected because she had spent so may weekends chasing little green men on one of my stupid hunches, or lying in a hospital recovering from injuries she sustained in places she never should have been, or being abducted by dark forces that shadowed her life from the moment she became associated with me? I pictured her maybe just sitting at home and reading a book, but I couldn't think of what kind of a book she might be reading, and suddenly I felt on the verge of tears, or of throwing something out of the window - maybe myself. None of this I wrote down, this book having been just another means I used to lie to myself. But the coldness and fear that gripped me are still between these pages.  
  
Or maybe it just seems to me that way because that's how I feel right now: short of breath, close to panic, as if someone was sitting on my chest; cold sweat sticky on my back and my forehead; this painful tugging in the pit of my stomach. I know this feeling, I've been there so may times, when she was in danger, or sick, or missing. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, my heart racing, a wild distant scream still in my ears. These dreams used to be about Samantha, but now they are about Scully almost everytime. I see her lying on a cold operating table, a white light glaring down on her, blurry shadows moving around her, I know that they are going to hurt her, but there's nothing I can do to prevent it... Or I'm just in a dark place, no way our no way in, and she's not there; not just that she's not physically there, but I have this sense that she is nowhere, that she is gone in a terribly and unimaginably *definitive* way...  
  
Is that the way it is now? Will I ever see her again? An absurd question, I know. She will be in the office, like every day, taunting me, leading me, walking circles around me. As if nothing ever happened. She didn't say a word, but I know that's how she wants it - though I don't know why. My life seems to be slipping out of my hands so fast now, so fast... Writing this is just another absurd attempt to hold on, to make it real by shaping what has passed between us into words, the words that were not said, and that will only exist in my mind. Maybe it all took place in my mind, maybe I dreamed it, and if I tell her, she'll just shake her head and go "oh brother" all over again.  
  
It's so difficult to write the truth. But I know it did happen, it was no dream, no fantasy. I know it in my bones, and in my heart. She came to me, she was beautiful, and naked, and scared, and while I held her I could feel her gliding farther and farther away. I can't explain it any better, it was almost as if she was celebrating a private ceremony of her own, and my part in it was insubstantial. She made me cry, and I think she cried too. I can't say for sure, she wouldn't look at me. She held me very close, but she wouldn't look into my eyes. Then she said "go to sleep now", and I did. I dreamed I was lying in my bed, and she was not there.  
  
Now the doors are open. Now I know the things I didn't want to know, feel the things I didn't want to feel. The things that really matter. Now I can read the truth in the lies I wrote down. And a wave of pain is rolling towards me, unlike any pain I have ever known. Heaven help me. Heaven help us both.  
  
I wish she had taught me how to pray. 


	2. Addiction

Summary: The same thing, Mulder writing in his journal, post "Brand X"  
  
1. Addiction  
  
A constant in my life. Addicted to my obsessions, addicted to the thought of finding Samantha, addicted to the conspiracies that I thought were determining my life. Addicted to pain. Addicted to solitude.  
  
Addicted to this love.   
  
Never to alcohol. Never to drugs. And now there's a package of cigarettes lying in front of me on the desk, and the colours seem so tempting. I know what it will taste like, I know how the smoke will fill my lungs, I know the poison will give my mind the illusion of rest. So many illusions, so many addictions, what does one more matter? Compared to all the other ones, this is harmless. Millions of people all over the world share this. I won't be alone.  
  
How many cigarrettes will it take to numb the loneliness? How many packages? Will I have to start with the booze, too, to make her image fade? I could do it, I could drink myself to death, starting today. It wouldn't take too long, I've never been a heavy drinker, my liver would collapse just like that. Or cocaine, speed, end it all in one big rush.  
  
Or I could shoot myself through the head. Self-pitying jerk.  
  
The truth is (since I decided to write the truth - I did decide that, didn't I? can't remeber...)- the truth is I miss her. I want her. I want her naked again, I want to make love to her again, and this time I want to make her feel it, make her feel that I'm there. I want to hold her back. If I could have her, if I could have one more night (and yes, I do sound like a fucking Phil Collins song), she would stay, if I had to tie her to the bed she would stay.  
  
Hey, there's an idea. I could keep her in my bedroom, fuck her and feed her, and I'm sure in time she would come to love me just as much as I love her, and we would live happily ever after.   
  
Great. Now this book has evolved from the book where I lied to myself to the book where I go crazy. Fun. I can write it all down, and the day I reach the last page I'll donate it to science and jump from a big rock.  
  
The truth, the truth. Stick to the facts. Fact is, my throat is sore as hell, my lungs still feel as if they were filled with rusty wires, I can still *feel* the little goddamn bugs crawling inside. Fact is, I hate this job more than ever. Fact is, she hasn't talked to me since that night. It has been strictly work. I knew she was going to walk circles around me, I knew that's the way she wanted it, but knowing and believing are two very different things. The story of my life. I knew it would hurt but man oh man.  
  
I'm dying here, and I don't care if it makes me sound like a self-pitying jerk.  
  
But she was in pain too, I could see it in her face when she was at the hospital. That stupid banter, when she took my hand and I said "must be bad", why did I do it? Why did I allow us to slip back to where we were, to where it's comfortable for both of us? I don't want to be comfortable anymore, I want to be loved, rejected, pissed, mad, extatic, anything but comfortable. But I gave in, because I could read the fear in her eyes.  
  
Well damn her, and damn her fear! I am afraid too. I should have talked, I should have said something, anything, I should have used the five fucking seconds of breathing air I had left to confront her with my feelings. How long would it have taken to say "why did you leave?" or "you hurt me" or "I love you". And I don't care what she would have answered, at least she would have known that I meant it. She would have known.   
  
But she does know. That's the worst of it. She knows that I'm sitting here thinking about her, missing her, aching for her body. I can feel her eyes on me, not for the first time, she is breathing right beside me.   
  
So why is she doing it? Does she enjoy making me suffer? Or is she the one who is suffering the most? Is it more a question of why are we doing this to each other?  
  
What's taking us so long? 


	3. Shame

Comment: After "Hollywood A.D." - mind, I *did* enjoy the episode, this is Mulder getting all angsty, not me!  
  
2. Shame  
  
I am so ashamed.   
  
Shame is something I have never felt like other people do: shame of being different, of being mocked, not fitting in. Shame of defeat. I started out already defeated, I have never had the luxury of shame.  
  
But this has brought it to me, searing, white hot shame, the shame that makes you want to crawl into a hole and never come out again. Just what I needed now. To see myself, my feelings, this whole idea of *us* that I don't even know how to refer to, this fragile thing that I try to hold in my hands whenever I open this book, ridiculed on the big screen. With her sitting right beside me, hiding her face in her hands. I don't even dare to imagine what she was thinking.  
  
Maybe she was thinking the same thing I was, sat there watching in horror, and couldn't fight the worst suspicion of them all: what if this were true? What if they managed a coarse, crude, but accurate portrayal of our relationship? After all, my first thought was: how did they know? And immediately after that: are they right? Is this it, is this the truth? Sexual attraction, and a kind of wicked, twisted emotional dependence, is that all there is between us, all there ever was?   
  
I promised not to lie anymore, at least here, in this book. So this is my fear: what if that night we shared (*that night* that is attaining an almost mythical status in my mind) was just sex? Two lonely people alone in the night, joining their bodies, longing for a bit of warmth, the confirmation that there is someone else out there, wanting to touch and be touched before they forget how to do it, how it feels.   
  
What about the love, then? What about the magic? What about this pain in my heart, that tugs and rips and clings and won't let go? What about this constant scream in my mind, the scream that only wants her? I have written before that I want her again, I want her naked, I want to make love to her again, and again, and again. And when I've done it again and again and again, will it be enough? Will I be satisfied?   
  
Posession. Is that what it's all about? Oh I don't know, I don't know! Through a whole life of searching and uncertainty, I've never had so many questions. All the questions I used to have I could answer, by lying to myself, by making an article of faith out of them, and afterwards, with Scully's help, by looking for scientific proof. But never did I question myself. I didn't have time for myself, I was not important. And yet, what an egoist I was, shaping the world only through my eyes. Until she came into my world, but instead of letting her shape my world, I started to shape her, to fit her into the world I had built, the world of fear and paranoia and guilt I felt so secure in.  
  
And she let herself. Why? She's strong, independent, she has beautiful mind and soul of her own, why did she let me take her over so completely? And that night she came to me, was that her way of claiming back what she had lost in giving it to me?  
  
I don't believe in miracles anymore. I used to, all my life has been based on belief. But never have I believed in myself, in my own ability to make things happen, to shape events, to take influence in other people. I have sat there, passive, waiting for fate to fall into my hands. Now I have to get up, walk, talk, do things, and it scares the shit out of me.  
  
Scared and confused and ashamed and angry and hurt, that's what I am. All because I saw the worst movie in the history of filmmaking.  
  
Maybe, just maybe, that's a - beginning? 


	4. Vision

Comment: Same old, same old - post "Fight Club". That sentence was the only one I could snatch for Mulder to angst about, don't I get at least a pat on the shoulder for that?  
  
3. Vison  
  
"They were not romantically involved."  
  
Did she look at me? I know I looked at her, but I didn't even give myself time to focus on her face. Was she thinking about us, was she asking herself, as I was, if we are "romantically involved" or what? Why we had allowed so may days, *weeks* to pass by, without talking openly about our relationship?   
  
Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit.  
  
And then, did she have this - this vision? (Of course not, I am the one having stupid visions, writing incredibly stupid monologues in a black book. Well, it's a hobby, something to do now I've stopped calling sex-hotline numbers.) I suppose I could call it wishful thinking, but at the time it didn't feel like something I had wilfully conjured, it came into my mind unbidden, like a dream.   
  
In the second (or maybe tenth of a second) it took me to flash her a look and look away again, while that sentence was still hanging in the air, I saw something. I saw us (of course, I see nothing but *us* lately) in front of a door. I didn't recognize it. It could have been the door of a future house I wished us to share, but it felt more like the door to a motel room. Brown it was, surrounded by a white wall. We were standing in front of it, I don't know if we had just stepped out or where about to step in, but I know we were together. Not just physically sharing the same space. There was this feeling of togetherness, of being one, that I have only experienced with her. We had our arms around each other, and then I kissed her. And while I kissed her, I felt an immense sorrow, and I don't know if it was mine or hers. It belonged to both of us, I guess.   
  
Thinking back, I try to remember if in this vision, or whatever it was, there was any clue as to where we were, what we were doing there, and why we were so sad. But there's nothing. The sound of rain. A golden reflection - I'm not sure, but that could have been Scully's little gold cross. And this sorrow, this huge sense of - loss, surrounding us, crashing upon us like a wave. What did we loose?  
  
I wish I could share this with her. I wish so many fucking things. That's something else I'm not used to. Wishing. I had learned to live without hope. Everybody knows that hope is not safe, it just makes you miserable. But I'm getting used to be miserable. Well, I was miserable before, but this is - a new kind of misery. Dare I say I like it better than the other one? Dare I say I feel less - alone? Or is it just the aftermath of the still lingering vision, this feeling of togetherness still warming my heart?   
  
I wish it would come true. Because even though we were in pain, we were together. I would trade my soul for a moment of togetherness like that. I would trade my soul. 


	5. Moving

Comment: Just something random.  
  
Moving (interlude)  
  
I am moving.  
  
Again, as so often these days, it comes to me as a revelation. As if I was moving for the first time. I would like to say that I am learning to give in to these sensations - foreboding, visions, gut-feelings - but it has come to me without my volition, it has crashed down on me. I am helpless.   
  
Strangely enough, this doesn't make me feel bad right now, but almost - euphoric, exhilarated. Like a roller coaster. I have surrendered my will, I have put myself into the hands of something bigger - I trust.  
  
And I begin to understand what it means, to trust.   
  
To love is to trust. I love her.   
  
Yes.  
  
And in loving her, I am changing. I can feel it daily, almost hourly. A stranger is growing inside me, he is claiming his space, pushing, *rearranging* me. It hurts, but it is necessary. 


	6. Wish

Comment: I finally arrive at "Je souhaite", a 'serious' episode, and what do I do? I un-angst! Mulder happy in this one. Go figure.  
  
4. Wish  
  
Well, why not say it? Since I promised to tell the truth in this book, and since I've been whining and whimpering over the past weeks, why not say that tonight, I'm happy?   
  
Because I haven't been happy for so long that I can't remember any longer if this is what it felt like, that's why. And yet, if I close my eyes and look for the first word that comes to mind to describe the mood I'm in, it's happiness. I feel light, as if I didn't have a trouble in the world. Fancy that. They'll be there tomorrow, but not tonight, not tonight.   
  
We sat together, we drank beer, we ate popcorn and watched a silly movie. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. She must have noticed, but I didn't care. She is beautiful, and that is part of my happiness. the wonder in it is that I'm not aching because I can't have her, I'm not suffering because I don't know if she loves me the way I love her, or if she ever will - I am content just loving her. Just like that.   
  
This was what my life was aimed at.   
  
Come to think of it, it's remarkable how I haven't been mentioning any of the cases we have been working on since - well, yes, since that night. (I should start writing that with capital letters: "THAT NIGHT". Well, what the hell, it *was* important, it did change my life, or at least it made me aware that my life was changing - or had changed... whatever.) I've been looking so much into myself, that whatever has been happening outside is just a side affair, at times something I barely notice. I can do the job, and I'm still interested... Interested? If I had known a year ago, a couple of months ago, that I would one day be referring to my job, my search, my fucking *quest* as "interesting", I would have jumped from a bridge. But this is how it is. All the while, out there, walking in the world, I am waiting. Waiting for my life to happen.  
  
And yet, important, strange things have happened. I still have a nasty cough at night, the scarring those goddamned bugs left on my lungs will be permanent. An addition to my permanent collection of scars. My life (at least part of it) has been taken to the big screen, to be twisted and spat upon and ridiculed by millions. And yesterday I was granted three wishes that could have changed this world. I could have altered the molecular structure of the Universe, had I only whished it. Precictable little moron that I am, I wasted the two first ones. But the third and last, oh, I was not about to waste that one, no, that one was going to make all the difference. I was going to be *clever*. Because that's what I am, smart as hell. Yeah.  
  
Big drumroll.... tada! Here I sit, at exactly the same desk, scribbling away in exactly the same shabby black book in exactly the same shithole of an apartment. I haven't eliminated hunger and poverty, there are still a thousand petty wars going on at this very moment, murderers are stalking their victims, lovers are heartbroken, Wall Street still exists. My sister, my mother and my father are all still dead. No wrongs have been undone. And the love of my life is not lying naked on my bed, her arms streched out longingly for me.  
  
And still I'm happy? I'm content, yes, even satisfied with myself? Yes, yes, and yes. I don't want a miracle solution. I want to do it on my own. If she loves me, I want to see the love in her eyes because it is me she's looking at. If she doesn't love me, I want to to feel the pain. I'm curious to see what will become of me. I want to walk the path. I want to see if all this introspection is going to make a country singer out of me after all.   
  
Just kidding.  
  
I want to live. That's my wish. And I don't need a genia to grant me that one. That one was granted to me the second I took my first breath.  
  
Lucky me. 


	7. Promise

Comment: "Requiem", and yes, it's angsty, but it has parts I quite like.   
  
5. Promise  
  
She's sleeping. I'm glad now that I brought this book with me. It listens so patiently to my story. It's nice to have a friend. Especially one that is so quiet.  
  
Why do I have the feeling I'm writing the last chapter of this story? If anything, this should be a beginning. We've been together, and we've done all those things, and whispered all those words that no one should ever know about, not even the best of friends. When I said to her "there is so much more than this", what I wanted was to set her free, to let her know it was all right to let go of all this, of me. Again, predictable little moron that I am. Who am I to set her free? Do I posess her? Do I even want to?  
  
Oh, she would have had all the right to slap me in the face, to laugh at me, scorn me. But she did nothing of the sort. She was sick and small in my arms, she turned to me and said "no there isn't. There isn't".  
  
There isn't. Nothing more important than us, than this, this night, our bodies under this blanket, our hands joined, our eyes seeing each other. Now there is silence in me, it seems like there is nothing more to say. I know we are here for an important reason, we have to find out what happened to those people, important revelations are about to made, I'm sure, and yet... what do I care? I have what I wanted. Her body there, on the bed. I only have to strech out my hand to touch her, and if I do, she will stir, maybe open her eyes just a little bit and smile when she sees me, then go back to sleep. What more could I possibly want?  
  
In Goethe's "Faust", Mephistopheles' bet with God is about making Faust say: "Moment, rest, you are so beautiful!" If, using all his evil power, all the temptations of the flesh and the mind he can think of, he can offer Faust one moment he wants to live in forever, his soul will be damned. Well, this is the moment I want to live in forever, why do I feel as if my soul was damned? When did I seal this pact with the devil? Why don't I deserve this happiness?  
  
I am restless. I should be sleeping, but I don't want to miss this, every second is slicing away a piece from my life. I have to fight the urge to wake her, to tell her to dress herself (quietly, quietly, lest we should waken the shadows and furies that are chasing us), and then run away together, just run, far, far away, somewhere where no one can find us. A childish notion, I know, yet a very powerful one. To fight it, I have opened this book, trying to conjure the evil spirits. The magic of words to counteract whatever spell has been laid upon us.   
  
And if I have to promise, promise I will. What do I promise?   
  
I will be good.   
  
I will be true.   
  
I will love her forever  
  
I will try to make her happy.   
  
I will marry her, and buy her a house, and we'll have a dog, or two, and a horse, if she wants one. Oh God please, all this I promise, just don't let it happen, whatever it is that you have in store for us, don't let it happen. Let her sleep peacefully, let us lead a completely fruitless investigation tomorrow, let us return to Washington and forget about alien invasions and spaceships and abductions.   
  
Now I'm writing myself into a frenzy. I don't mean half of what I write. I don't want the investigation to be fruitless, I do care about alien invasions and spaceships and abductions, and so does she, if only because our future can't begin if our past hasn't been concluded. And then there's the tiny detail of the destiny of humanity and all that. Plus the very obvious notion that the past can *never* reach its conclusion, since it is constantly chasing us in the form of that bitch, the present.  
  
So, what I *should* do is lay myself down beside her and catch a few hours of sleep, there's a long day ahead of us. But I already know that I won't do that. I will lay beside her with my eyes open, stare at the ceiling and then back at her and then back at the ceiling, until the sun creeps under the curtains.  
  
Heaven help us. 


End file.
